A language learners’ forum

Hello everyone! My name is Jarek, and I teach military history at the university in Toruń, Poland
Once I read a proverb "One who fails to plan, plans to fail" and it seems to be true. Unfortunately, it is challenging for me to do any plans. Besides work, I also have a quite a big family - 5 children (with two pairs of twins among them ). This was my excuse for not making any plans in language learning. I will try to change it now.

Writing this log will also have another advantage - I can improve my English Please feel free to correct me in any language! I will appreciate it. Writing skills in English are the most important here - I hope to be able to publish academic texts in that language once.

Hebrew is the most important language for me. I made a Polish course from Shorr Foundation, but this was only basic level. I decided to do the FSI Hebrew Basic Course. I listened to all the lessons for at least several times, but I realised that this doesn't help me. So I changed tactics - I put all the drills into Anki. It takes a lot of time and goes slowly, but seems to improve my speaking skills. I decided to use also "Hebrew Military Reader" to improve reading skills.

Arabic is a secondary language most of the time. At first, I wanted to learn only Hebrew, but I decided that I have to know languages of both sides of this conflict to be able to analyse the events. I am focusing on DLI MSA Basic Course, but I also use Madeenah Arabic and Polish ESKK "Arabski dla początkujących" (Arabic for beginners). In DLI and ESKK I also put each exercise and drill into Anki. So my progress is slower, but I feel that I mastered the finished lessons. For Madeenah I mostly watch videos from the Institute of the Language of the Qu'ran in Toronto

So my plans for next week are:
English - write a report from my activities
Hebrew - finish adding to Anki FSI lesson 22 (maybe even Today) and prepare soundtracks for Lesson 23. Translate and learn first text in Hebrew Military Reader
Arabic - Finish DLI MSA Sound and Script Lesson 7 and gather recordings for the Lesson 8 (the package of DLI which I have unfortunately lacked audio for both lessons, so I ask on HiNative people to read out the words for me). Watch at least one video from LQ Toronto
Reviewing all Flashcards in those languages is, of course, mandatory and does not apply under plans - it is mandatory

Wow, two sets of twins?! The odds of that... Congrats!

Hey welcome! I also have 5 kids -- I know what an impact it has on free time

Morgana wrote:Ok I'll bite My corrections aren't academic-level but then again this is a forum post. Mostly minor tweaks. You probably already know your English is great.

Thanks! My English is worse than you can see in the post since I use Grammarly to correct the most basic mistakes.

IronMike wrote:Wow, two sets of twins?! The odds of that... Congrats!

Thanks! Both are in a row and came from one Egg cell. I read that for one such pair is born every 1:250 births. I am not good at math, and I was always saying that "probably I do not understand probability theory", but changes for two such twins in a row are 1:(250*250) = 1:62500

Ani wrote:Hey welcome! I also have 5 kids -- I know what an impact it has on free time

That is very nice! I spoke with a friend of mine about children once. He said that he has three kids. I said to him that I had three also (it was a few years ago). And he asked, "are they boys or girls". "Girls" I answered. "Then you do not have kids" was his reply. The last two are boys, and I can perfectly understand what he meant

That's super funny! Four of my 5 are boys so I really do understand, but sometimes I'm grateful for the simplicity of boys' problems over the complexity of girl problems!

In the (U.S.) military, a vast majority of the people with kids have 3 kids. I have 4. I used to josh other guys in my units. "Oh, three kids? That's cute. You enter the professional dad ranks at four."

Then you two come here with five kids each. I'm an amateur again.

Congrats to you both. I love kids and if we could have, we would have had at least two more.

Twin daughters here (one pair, I mean) and that's that. I don't even dare thinking about more, as they're likely to come in pairs.

I'm learning Hebrew with the hope it will also give me a headstart in Arabic, so I'll be following this log.

We say in Poland "kołdra jest za krótka" ("quilt is too short"), so it can not cover everything. I see that I can not fulfill my plan. Kids are not to blame Besides learning languages I try of course to write some texts, etc. So I managed to translate given part from Hebrew Military Reader but did not finished (or even seriously started) my Anki decks. It is half-past eleven, and I should spend about half an hour doing flashcards. I can not. I have to adjust my plans to the reality and not to the dreams